


Glassheart

by Esca



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Character Death, Death of a Partner/Spouse, Don't Read Without Kleenex, ItaDei - Freeform, M/M, terminal illness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-02
Updated: 2018-09-02
Packaged: 2019-07-06 03:00:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15877101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Esca/pseuds/Esca
Summary: “I don’t know how to exist without you.”“You’re not going toexistwhen I’m gone, Dei. You’re going tolive.You’re going to live a long and happy life with Sasori or whomever else you end up with, and have the world you imagined for us. You’re going to live-because I’ll never forgive you otherwise if you don’t.”[ItaDei]





	Glassheart

**Author's Note:**

> I have been sitting on this piece for a couple months now. I'm proud to finally be able to present it to you all. I don't write for the tragedy/angst genre often so I hope this is decent. Thank you for your consideration in reading this, you do me great honor. If you like this work, don't forget to leave kudos or a comment.

❆❅ ✧ ❅❆

**Glassheart**

✧

“You didn’t come home last night.”

He’d been waiting for this conversation to happen. He thought the moment he stepped foot into their home, disheveled and reeking of sex, that Itachi would say something. But the raven had just smiled at him sweetly, his lips pale and lacking warmth. 

Then he’d gone into another coughing fit, tinting them with the stain of blood. 

They both knew Itachi was on Death’s doorstep. It had crept up slowly, almost invisible, his illness. Barely showing any signs of manifesting until what was thought to be normal occasional breathlessness morphed monstrously into wheezing fits, and desperate gasps for oxygen. It further progressed into violent, body-wracking coughs that made Itachi’s bones feel like they would shatter. And then he’d begun spitting up blood. That had been a more recent occurrence, only happening in the last few months.

They’d discovered the large black mass floating in Itachi’s lungs too late for anything to be done. Years, months, days... no one could pinpoint an exact time frame for his impending expiration.

“...You were with someone?” the raven continued, clearing his already-raw throat.

Deidara narrowed his aegean blue eyes to focus on his partner, feeling his blood boil the second they established a mutual visual contact with each other. It was hard for him to even regard his significant other anymore without feeling some form of loathing for how easily the other had just given in to his fate. “What’s the point in asking if you already know the answer, hm?”

“May I ask who?”

“Sasori...” the blond pretended to examine his fingernails in disinterest, suddenly feeling overwhelmed by voidlike onyx orbs and needing to look anywhere but in their consuming depths. He hated those eyes, how they pulled him in and drowned him.

“That’s good, though. You two have some things in common... Are you going to pursue it further?” Itachi blinked his thinning eyelashes as he regarded his lover serenely, looking seemingly unaffected by Deidara’s admission of indiscretion.

“You almost sound like you want me to...” Deidara replied in a hostile tone, folding his arms across his chest.

Itachi slowly moved from his location in the recliner to join the blond on the sofa, sitting next to him and not reacting when Deidara instinctively scooted away. “Maybe I do,” he said, reaching his pale, bony fingers out and using them to grasp Deidara by the chin to force him to look back into his gaze. “Just because I’m dying does not mean you get to stop living, as well. That’s why... I’m not even upset at you. I’m _happy,_ because it means that I can depart from this life knowing you’ll be cherished when I'm gone.”

_“Stop fucking talking about that happening, hm.”_

“It’s inevitable.”

Gritting his teeth, Deidara relaxed his arms to his sides and balled his hands into tight fists. “I fucking _know_ you’re going to die, and I know it can’t be helped or stopped... But Itachi, you can’t even have the fucking decency to be mad at me? I _cheated on you_ and all you can say is you’re _happy_ about it!? ...I thought you would at least feel something, or are you already dead inside...?”

Itachi frowned deeply and released his grip on Deidara’s chin to cup the artist’s square jaw and cheeks in both palms. “So you want me to be angry...?”

Upon impulse despite his ill feelings for the man he loved, Deidara immediately curled his fingers around thin, milk white wrists, careful not to bruise them in his grasp. _“I want you to hurt as much as I’m hurting right now.”_

The raven simply sighed and smiled. 

“No, that’s _not fucking okay,_ Itachi. You don’t get to smile like nothing is wrong...!” Deidara got up from the sofa angrily and began pacing their living room.

“Darling... you’re going to be okay. It’s going to be okay. I know it doesn’t seem like it, but it will be-”

_“It’s not fucking going to be okay! It is never going to be fucking okay. What the fuck am I supposed to do without you!?”_ the artist picked up a vase full of decorative glass and threw it, shattering it into thick shards and tiny fragments. The sculptor let out a guttural scream of fury, and blue eyes were wild and desperate as Deidara threaded his fingers through his long saffron locks and _pulled._ Itachi was immediately to his feet, moving with catlike grace despite his illness to his lover’s side, encircling him with spindly limbs and holding him as tight as he possibly could muster given his limited strength.

“Stop this, _now._ What will it help? What will being angry and upset do for _either_ of us? I want to enjoy what little bit of breath I have left in these tired lungs... and not expend it on a fruitless argument,” Itachi breathed into the younger man’s ear, pressing his dry lips to the shell and kissing the skin softy. 

The artist let out a choked sob and moved his hands from his hair to cover his face as he openly began weeping. “I fucking _hate you,_ Itachi. I fucking hate you for _leaving me_ like this. It’s not right-”

Itachi took advantage of their slight height difference to rest his chin on top of golden locks. He slipped his eyes shut for a brief moment as he simply allowed Deidara to grieve-for what could have and should have been. “...I’m sorry. I never meant for it to be this way...”

“Don’t fucking apologize. _Don’t you dare. You don’t get to placate me like that._ We were supposed to get _married,_ Itachi. We were going to have a _life_ together...” Deidara’s voice cracked as he murmured despite his tears. 

“Look at everything around us in this house. Look at what all we’ve done together... and you say we _were_ going to have a life together? Darling, we already have one. You’ve just been too upset to remember...”

“...I love you to the sun and stars...” the blond said in a barely-audible whisper.

“And I love you to the moon and back...” the raven murmured lowly, petting Deidara’s hair and smiling when his reddened irises finally met his. 

_“I don’t know how to exist without you.”_

“You’re not going to _exist_ when I’m gone, Dei. You’re going to _live._ You’re going to live a long and happy life with Sasori or whomever else you end up with, and have the world you imagined for us. You’re going to live-because I’ll never forgive you otherwise if you don’t.”

“Ita...” the younger man began hesitantly, his voice once more warbling as fresh tears slipped down his cheeks in vines. 

“Shh. Let’s just... be happy, while we still can...” Itachi replied softly, searching the artist’s face, memorizing it, studying it. He leaned in and pressed his cold, white lips to full and ripened pink ones, Deidara’s eyes closing as he immediately responded, almost desperate as the saffron-haired man returned the Uchiha’s embrace and ran his fingers through loose, dull ebony strands. 

They continued kissing, tongues lazily sliding against the other and mingling saliva with the taste of rust and copper. Deidara pulled away briefly with a sigh, his cheeks flushed pink. “I’m sorry...”

“Don’t be... it’s flattering you’re still attracted to me.”

“You’re not dead yet. Itachi...”

“Mm. You are right. I’m not, quite yet at least anyways... I’ll have to take advantage of that, won’t I?” the dark-haired male smiled secretively, running his palm flat down the expanse of Deidara’s clothed torso until it hovered pointedly above tented denim. 

“You can’t-” 

“-I’d appreciate it if you would not tell me what I can and cannot do to my own partner, thanks,” Itachi countered evenly, breaking their hold on one another to swipe away the artist’s tears with the pad of his thumb and lead him to their bedroom.

Deidara allowed himself to apprehensively be detoured and it wasn’t long before his back was pressed into the mattress and sheets, Itachi straddling his waist and kissing him pliantly. The blond propped himself up on his elbows to meet the other’s insistent pecks heatedly, his arousal straining. “If it’s too much for you, you have to stop...” 

“Don’t worry... I have strength enough for this...”

They resumed their kiss with intensity, Itachi rocking his brittle hips into Deidara’s and relishing the soft sound he was rewarded with as a result of their shared friction. His member responded in kind to each keening noise, and it wasn’t long before he clutched both their aching, throbbing cocks in spindly fingers, jerking them both off with fervor.

The artist peered at him through long bangs and Deidara bit down on his lip as he regarded his sick partner and marveled at how he managed to make Death look so beautiful.

The slick slide of their arousals against the silkenness of the other drove them into a frenzy of lustful groans, passionate whispers, and encouragements of _more, don’t stop, I’m close..._

Deidara arched his back off the mattress with a groan as he reached his climax at the same time as his partner, the two of them spilling into the raven’s palm and on the blond’s t-shirt and belly.

The younger of the two grimaced and used the hem of his tee to wipe off the remnant of their activity, lifting it over his head and tossing it to land inelegantly on the floor. 

Itachi tucked himself back in his boxer-briefs and let out a shaky breath as he came down from his orgasm. He began coughing violently as he moved off of Deidara and collapsed next to him on the bed, chest heaving as he winced. 

“Are you okay-”

“-I’m fine. Just a little tired is all... help me get undressed for bed?” 

Deidara gingerly assisted him in removing his clothes, Itachi’s shirt and jeans joining his own on the maple hardwood flooring. The artist shimmied off his denim and adjusted himself back in his underwear as he crawled back into bed with the raven, showing a tenderness he reserved only for him to see.

Looking into aegean blue depths, Itachi sat up slowly and bit down on his bottom lip as he reached behind his neck and undid the clasp of his necklace. Motioning for Deidara to come closer, he draped it around the other’s throat and threaded the eyelet, situating the article of jewelry so it was sitting in the concaves and hollows of the sculptor’s collarbone. “Even when it may not seem like it...” he began.

Deidara blinked his eyes and parted his lips slightly as Itachi spoke. His fingers danced along the three rings of the necklace absently. 

“I will always be with you.”

They fell asleep in a tangle of limbs, the only sounds their fettered breathing and the patter of raindrops on the window panes. 

It was still raining when Deidara woke up in the morning. He rolled over in Itachi’s arms and propped himself up on an elbow. “Ita...” the blond froze as his eyes settled on the blue tinge of Itachi’s lips. “Ita...?” he sat up fully and threw the covers off their bodies. “Ita!” Deidara’s voice became panicked as he placed his index and middle finger on the side of the raven’s throat.

He bit down on his lip and began trembling visibly as he felt no pulse, no spark of life left in the body of his beloved. Grasping onto bony shoulders, Deidara shook him violently. “Itachi! This isn’t fucking funny... this isn’t...” he broke down into wracked sobs and curled into a ball, repeating one word over and over again like a mantra as he rocked back and forth. “No, no, no... _no...”_

The rain responded to his loss by falling down harder in a torrent.

❆❅ ✧ ❅❆

**Author's Note:**

> You can follow me on tumblr at https://shes-a-libertine.tumblr.com/


End file.
